


Where You Go I Will Go

by boughofawillowtree



Series: St. Dymphna's [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1700s, Caring Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Kids (Good Omens), Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Disguise, Female-Presenting Aziraphale (Good Omens), Female-Presenting Crowley (Good Omens), Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Good Omens Holiday Swap 2019, Historical, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Ireland, Nuns, Period-Typical Homophobia, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22660093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boughofawillowtree/pseuds/boughofawillowtree
Summary: In this expansion ofFields of the Fatherless, Crowley and Aziraphale manage a bunch of rowdy kids, one frog, and some local gay and lesbian youths who need a safe haven.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: St. Dymphna's [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1630222
Comments: 7
Kudos: 50
Collections: Clerical Omens, Good Omens Holiday Swap 2019





	Where You Go I Will Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyDragonsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyDragonsbane/gifts).



> This is the second of my two pinch-hit gifts for @ladydragonsbane! The actual prompts for this include friendship, Crowley interacting with kids, and Crowley and Aziraphale through history. I misread the pinch-hit document, and the person listed above ladydragonsbane also requested Crowley and Aziraphale connecting with the queer community through history, and was 3k words into this fic when I realized my mistake. And since it does include a few things that were actually requested, I figured I'd go ahead and finish and gift it anyway. Ladydragonsbane definitely deserves two gifts for waiting so long and getting one that fell so far afield of the initial requests! 
> 
> Huge thanks to @ladydragonsbane and the excellent mods of the Good Omens Holiday Swap for all their patience and awesome work.

It was early August and the weather was, as one of the nuns had put it, “hotter’n the toe of the devil’s boot.”

Only Aziraphale had caught Crowley’s mumbled correction about which part of his boss’s anatomy was most reminiscent of the stifling heat.

Crowley, in his guise as the Abbess Antonia who presided over St. Dymphna’s Mother & Child Home And Laundry, had ceased all laundry operations for that day. He declared the day, a Tuesday, to be an “honorary Sabbath.” Aziraphale was not aware of such a concept existing anywhere in the canon, but given that he was a simple young nun named Sister Zylphia, he said nothing to contradict the Abbess.

After a light lunch, during which the pitchers of water drawn from the property’s well remained slightly cooler than the ambient temperature would have suggested possible, the younger women had taken the children down the hill to swim in a local pond. The rest of St. Dymphna’s residents were napping in the shade or cloistered in their rooms to indulge in various states of undress.

And so that sleepy afternoon found a demon and an angel, seated together in the Abbess’s study, both fully divested of their habits, sipping iced whisky from sweating glasses. Crowley couldn’t well miracle ice cubes for the rest of the residents without raising too many questions, but alone with his friend, he had cooled the room and conjured all manner of summertime comforts.

“Heat ought to break sometime soon,” Aziraphale said, fanning himself with his wrinkled wimple.

“Mmm.” Crowley did not seem to be paying much attention. He was bent over, one sweat-dark lock of red hair stuck to his forehead, tracing an ice cube gently over the lips of the baby who fussed and squirmed against his chest. Her name was Anna, and she was an orphan, having lost both her parents to the drunken violence that plagued so many.

Baby Anna screamed piteously any time she was not held tightly against another’s body, so the nuns and mothers had taken to wrapping her tightly to themselves with scraps of linen. But the heat was too much for any human to keep a second sweaty body against their skin, and so the Abbess, with her cool serpent’s blood and penchant for miracles of convenience, was holding the child for the day.

“The whisky ought to help her sleep, at least,” Aziraphale said, pressing both his palms to his own delightfully frigid glass.

“Hope so,” Crowley said, looking up. “Poor thing could use a break.”

“An honorary Sabbath, one could say,” Aziraphale said with a cheeky smile.

“Indeed.” Crowley popped the ice cube into his mouth and crunched. He was about to say something else, a playful grin baring his sharp teeth, when a frantic pounding sounded from the front door of the building.

Aziraphale was mildly surprised by the aggravated stance Crowley took, sighing and rolling his eyes as he pulled his habit back on and stood up. Normally, the demon-Abbess was possessed of nearly infinite patience with his charges. Crowley handed the baby to Aziraphale and headed down the hallway, looking tall and imposing in his robes and dark glasses. 

Aziraphale followed hurriedly behind, having hastily re-dressed and tucked the baby in the crook of one arm. She was not thrilled about the shift, and was glaring up at Aziraphale as if to chastise him for not being Crowley. 

Aziraphale - now once again fully in the role of Sister Zylphia - caught up to the Abbess just as she was opening the front door. 

Standing on the front steps were two young women, their arms around each other, looking desperate and rather bedraggled. Aziraphale’s eyes instantly darted down to their stomachs, but neither seemed to be showing.

“Please help us,” rasped the taller of the two. She had a wide, moon-like face, covered in freckles, and a thick red braid that fell over her shoulder. Frizzy curls, having escaped the plait, framed her head like a halo.

The other girl was willowy thin, with straight brown hair and a drawn face. She did not speak, nor meet anyone’s eyes. Her face was puffy from crying, and she worried at her bottom lip with her teeth.

“Come in,” Crowley said, his Abbess’s voice sounding exasperated. Aziraphale did not miss the way the demon glanced out the door, down the road, as he ushered the girls inside. They both had the air of chased rabbits, and it seemed likely that some brute of a man would be arriving soon behind. 

They settled in the kitchen, Aziraphale bouncing the cranky infant on his lap, Crowley looking down his severe nose at the two young women. “Which one of you is with child?”

The two girls looked at each other, then the redheaded one spoke. “Er, neither of us, ma’am.”

Aziraphale cringed at the odd sensation as the baby in his lap grabbed one of his fingers in her sticky hand and put it in her mouth, but if the child was suckling on his finger, she wasn’t shrieking, and so he endured. Crowley had enough to worry about with the two girls, who were currently telling a tale that made Aziraphale’s heart break, just as it always did. There was no shortage of sad tales arriving on the doorstep of St. Dymphna’s.

The redhead told them her name was Bethany. “Me an’ Mary was as close as girls can get,” she said, then mumbled, “and then prob’ly then some.”

Mary was quiet, looking very uncomfortable and holding tightly to Bethany’s hand under the table.

“Her pa caught us together, and said she ought to be married. To his friend Tobin…” Bethany trailed off, then glanced over at Mary.

“Tobin’s a good man,” Mary said directly down at the wood grain of the table, speaking in a flat monotone. Looking closely, Aziraphale could see a yellowing bruise at her hairline, and a swelling on her lip.

Bethany scoffed with a level of malice that Aziraphale thought could rival Crowley’s at his most petulant. “Tobin ain’t a good anything. He said we weren’t to see each other. But I knew he was makin’ her sad, and I just couldn’t stay away.”

Mary gave a small watery smile.

“Then this afternoon I saw Mary was hanging up the wash, and I went to help her, and we went down to the stream to pick snails and dip our toes, and somehow Tobin found us, and…” Bethany’s eyes went dark. “And it got bad. Real bad. I’d known Tobin wasn’t good to her, but I hadn’t seen what he was doin’.”

The four of them sat in silence for a moment, absorbing what had been said, the only sound in the room the gurgling of baby Anna as she gummily mauled Aziraphale’s hand.

“He tried to hit you,” Mary said after a while, her voice nearly a whisper.

“Yeh, that,” Bethany said. “I went in to try and have him off her, and he swung at me. But I’ve got three brothers and a drunk of an uncle, so he wasn’t much of a fight.” Aziraphale did not miss the barely-concealed note of pride in Bethany’s composure. “Grabbed Mary, I did, and we ran here. I hear you help girls who need it.”

“He’ll be wanting me home,” Mary said, picking at the edge of the table.

“Well you ain’t going,” Bethany said. “Can we stay here?”

Abbess Antonia pinched the bridge of her nose, one of her long-suffering affectations. “And neither of you are with child?”

“No, ma’am. But we’s both good workers, and we can help in the laundry. Please. Tobin and her pa are out to kill me, I’m sure of it, and not much better for her.”

Aziraphale knew Crowley would not turn the two girls out, but still the Abbess went through the motions of considering, tapping her slender fingers on her chin, closing her well-hidden eyes. 

“Alright,” she said, finally. “Sister Zylphia, would you be a dear and go make up a room for these two?”

In a flash, the two young women shared a look of shocked delight at the Abbess’s use of the singular  _ room _ . Aziraphale pretended not to notice.

“Of course, Abbess.” Aziraphale stood and gratefully handed baby Anna back into Crowley’s care, wiping his slobber-sodden hand on his skirts. 

Around dinnertime, Aziraphale heard the shouted songs and slapping of bare feet that announced the return of the children, giggly and worn out from their day at the pond. Bethany and Mary had retreated to their room, speaking in hushed tones about their plans and concerns.

As the raucous crowd of children poured into the kitchen, Abbess Antonia welcomed them with a wide smile. She gathered up little Declan and swung him around, making him shriek with delight and causing Sister Hannah to duck lest she catch a foot to her face. Fiadh had learned to whistle with a blade of grass, and was filling the stone-walled kitchen with the piercing nose. After setting Declan down, Antonia made a dramatic show of covering her ears and falling to the floor, rolling around in agony, making the little girl stop and beam with pride at the power of her new skill. 

Never one to cede all the attention to Fiadh, Colin caught Antonia’s eye and hiked up his pants to show a bloody scab, announcing, “I hurt my knee!”

Antonia examined the wound, hissing sympathetically. “What a little warrior we have here,” she said. “Were you fighting a dragon?”

“I fell down on a big rock!” Colin spread his arms out to describe the size of the offending stone. “And it was bleeding everywhere!”

“The blood went on a flower,” Declan added. “It made red drops all over!”

“Sister Grace put a handkerchief on it,” Colin continued. “And it stuck to my leg!”

“It was so gross,” a little girl named Mary Catherine squealed. 

“My my,” Abbess Antonia said, straightening up. “Well, it certainly sounds like a thrilling time. Did any of you manage to have a swim, with all of this going on?”

The children answered with a chorus of “yes”es and babbled, overlapping stories about swimming in the pond. Antonia laughed indulgently. 

“Alright, wee ones. Go get washed up, please. We’ll hear more about it over dinner.”

The children, accompanied by tired-looking young mothers and nuns, thundered down the hallway toward the washroom, leaving Crowley and Aziraphale alone in the kitchen. “Suppose I’ll go let our Ruth and Naomi know it’s suppertime,” Crowley said, and left Aziraphale to lay out a spread of sandwich breads, cheeses, meat, and fruit. 

Slowly, the adults trickled back into the kitchen, their faces damp from a quick washing, worn out from the day in the sun. A few helped Sister Zylphia set out dinner, while the rest took seats at the long tables, reaching for sliced fruits with grateful hands. Mary and Bethany returned, trailed by the Abbess Antonia. Both looked subdued, though their eyes lit up at the food. 

“Kids not back yet?” Crowley asked, a note of concern in his high Abbess’s voice. Aziraphale shrugged. Crowley seemed to have an innate sense for the rhythms and needs of the mother and child home, but it had not occurred to Aziraphale that the children were late in returning.

Just then, a loud shriek sounded from the washroom area, followed by scrambling noises and unintelligible shouts.

Abbess Antonia raced down the hall toward the noise. Sister Zylphia motioned for the rest of the women to remain seated. “Stay, eat,” she said. “We’ll handle it.” 

The children’s washroom was a disaster. The main washing-up tub, kept low to the floor to accommodate the wee ones, was covered in some kind of green slime. Water was all over the floor, making it slippery enough to add to the chaos. Fiadh was soaked from head to toe, and was frantically splashing around in the washbasin. Mary Catherine had climbed onto one of the toilets and was crying. 

Meanwhile, Declan was scooping handfuls of whatever green slime had gotten all over the tub, and depositing them into a sloppy pile on the now-filthy tile floor. Colin, perhaps most ominously, was nowhere to be seen. 

“And what, pray tell, is all this?”

Every head in the room turned to face the now very stern looking Abbess, who stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips, Sister Zylphia behind her.

There was a tense pause as the children waited to see who would speak first. Fiadh had just opened her mouth to say something when Colin rounded the corner, victoriously holding a fistful of worms, and announcing that he’d “found some! Got some!”

He skidded to a stop at the sight of the two adults, then slowly moved his mud-caked hand behind his back.

“What have you got there, dear?” Abbess Antonia asked.

“Uhh,” Colin hedged, looking desperately at Fiadh.

“We need them!” Fiadh cried. “We need to help Harvey!”

Harvey, as it turned out, was a fat green frog who had been transported back from the pond in Fiadh’s pocket. The children intended to keep him as a pet, and the green slime was sourced from Declan’s shoes, which he had filled with algae from the pond to create Harvey a cozy home at St. Dymphna’s.

In their attempts to settle Harvey into the washroom, however, the frog had sustained an injury to one of his legs, and Fiadh was near hysterical as she showed Antonia and Zylphia the frog. The worms were an attempt to “cheer him up,” as Declan put it, hoping that a hearty lunch would heal the amphibian’s leg.

“I see,” Antonia said, after the children had explained themselves. “Well, I do think Master Harvey has had enough excitement for one day. Frogs are meant for ponds, not laundries. Sister Zylphia, would you move him out to the garden, please?”

Aziraphale took Harvey in his hands, discreetly repaired the broken bone, and nodded. The frog was heavy and slimy, and the energy coming off the creature could only be described as “indignant confusion.” Aziraphale certainly could not blame him.

“I’m sure he’ll be around for visits,” Antonia continued, “but he can’t live in the washroom.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” Fiadh sniffled.

“And neither can any of us, with the washroom in such a state.” Abbess Antonia clicked her tongue as she looked around at the scene. “We’ll have you wash up in the adult washroom, then after some dinner let’s all see what we can do about this mess.”

Antonia lifted Mary Catherine off the toilet seat where she was still huddled. “Come now, sweet,” she sang as she scooped the girl into her arms and led the remaining children to the much tidier washroom across the hall. 

The children would need plenty of help washing up, given both the phenomenal level of grime and the fact that the adult washroom was not set up for smaller bodies. Aziraphale considered following along to help, but felt rather exhausted by the prospect and decided instead to quietly carry Harvey the frog into the garden. As he walked by, he saw Crowley lifting Declan up to a sink and rubbing him down with a clean towel. Abbess Antonia had things well in hand.

At dinner, Mary and Bethany kept to themselves, whispering over their food. 

“They can’t stay here,” Aziraphale said to Crowley, as they stood elbow-to-elbow doing the dishes. 

“I know,” Crowley sighed. “Mary keeps thinking she’ll head back to her husband, but Bethany’s as stubborn as a mule and loves her too fiercely for that. And it’s no telling when our friend Tobin finds out his darling wife is under our roof.” He scrubbed viciously at a bit of cheese crusted to a plate. “It won’t end well, I’m afraid, not for either of them.”

“I know a place,” Aziraphale began. “In London.”

“You know lots of places in London, angel.” Crowley’s patience had been worn thin by the heat and the events of the day, and Aziraphale swallowed hard, willing himself to stop equivocating.

“A home,” he continued. “Two lovely women. And, well, their girls.”

Crowley stopped washing. “London’s mighty far from this Irish countryside.” 

“Perhaps that’s for the best,” Aziraphale said. But he knew what the demon meant. The girls were young, Irish, parochial. 

“I’ll speak to them,” Crowley said, resuming the washing. “You write to your friends, see if they’ve got the room to spare.”

The next morning, Aziraphale was interrupted from his reading by a gentle knocking on his door. He hastily dressed in his nun’s garb, then opened the door to find Bethany and Mary, looking for all the world like nervous penitents.

“Yes, my children?”

Bethany spoke first, as was their obvious pattern. “The Abbess told us you knew a place in London where we could go, and be safe, together.”

“That’s true, I do. Are you wishing to travel there?”

“We haven’t decided,” Mary said. 

“But we have a question,” Bethany continued.

“Yes?” The stone floor was cold on Aziraphale’s feet, and he regretted not putting on his slippers before beginning the conversation.

“This place,” Mary said, wringing her hands. “Does it take boys, too?”

“Come again?”

“Liam, down in town,” Bethany said. “He’s - he’s like us.”

“I see.” 

“He’s only sixteen,” Mary added. 

“I’ll ask around,” Aziraphale said. “I promise.”

“Thank you,” both girls said, their voices breathy with relief.

When Aziraphale mentioned it to Crowley later, as the two relaxed in the Abbess’s study after breakfast, the demon was not thrilled. “I’m running a mother and child home, here, not some kind of...railway station for runaway lovers.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale chided sternly. Outside of this room, where Aziraphale played the part of a meek young Sister, he never set a toe out of line. But here, behind the closed door, where they dropped their disguises and were to each other as they had always been, he was emboldened. “They need somewhere to go.”

“I can’t have a lad at St. Dymphna’s, gentle as he may be. You know that. Too many of the women here have…” Crowley trailed off, pleading with his eyes for Aziraphale to finish the sentence without him having to speak the traumas and tragedies that rang through the halls of St. Dymphna’s. “And say he has an eye for the ladies as well? Last thing I need is a swelling nun. What would you have me do?”

“I know some fellows in America. New York. Let me write to them. And if they’ll take him, he’d only stay here a week at most, while we find him passage.”

“You mean while  _ I _ find him passage.”

“He could stay in my room,” Aziraphale pleaded, knowing Crowley would acquiesce. He always did, in the end. 

“Alright, angel. But just this once. And only because we both know Miss Bethany would never be out of our hair if we didn’t.”

Aziraphale beamed. “She’s a firecracker, that one.”

Crowley nodded. “London’s got no clue what’s coming.”

***

Though letters to America often took months, if not longer, to be exchanged, Aziraphale would not last so long with Bethany prodding him near daily about her friend, and her worry had begun to inform his. Liam was, according to her, straining under the weight of his secret and near ready to inform his father, not despite the older man’s penchant for violence, but in an attempt to provoke it.

“He’d make his Pa a son slayer, he always said, and then he would know what it felt like, the whole town lookin at ya sideways, angry and alone with nowhere to do. I’d say Liam, you don’t gotta do that, but he says it’s better than doing it his own self, what with the Church against it.” Bethany would find moments to plead her case, cornering Sister Zylphia to press for Liam’s rescue. “You’ve got to get him out, Sister. Why can’t he just come stay here already?”

His message, aided with angelic miracles, found its way to its intended recipients within mere days. 

His friends in New York were typically very skeptical of young outsiders seeking refuge at their doors, knowing all too well the risks they took in trusting anyone. But Mr. Ezra Faile’s word went far with them, and Aziraphale had promised to put up the boy’s rent for as long as was needed, if someone could provide a room. So they had offered welcome and safe harbor, which was all the better, given the agitation with which Bethany insisted Liam needed it. 

The morning after he received a response from the Americans, Aziraphale slipped out from beyond the cloistered walls of St. Dymphna’s and assumed the standard appearance of an Irishman of the time. He wandered down the lane and found himself in town, seeking the young Liam. 

He found the boy slinging heavy fenceposts into a pile near a sheep’s paddock, occasionally nudging a more curious sheep out of the way with a well-placed shin. The boy was tall and broad-shouldered, with near black hair and striking gray eyes.

“Excuse me,” Aziraphale said. “Are you the young master Liam?”

“Inquiries go to my Da,” Liam said, not looking up from his work. “But we isn’t sellin’ much wool these days. Not near enough to go around.”

“I was actually hoping to speak to you.”

Finally Liam raised his head. “What for?”

“I’m a friend of Bethany’s,” Aziraphale said.

Liam spat a coarse laugh. “No, you aren’t.”

Aziraphale was taken aback. “What makes you say so?”

“Bethany don’t go for men. Not as friends, not as nothin’.”

“Isn’t she your friend?”

“That’s different,” Liam said gruffly, then returned to his work, easily lifting a massive beam and tossing it to the far end of the paddock, then bending down to pat an especially pesky sheep on the head as if to indicate that he was far more interested in the animal’s company than Aziraphale’s.

“I know where she is,” Aziraphale tried, leaning over the rough-hewn fence to try and speak with the boy.

“No you don’t,” snapped Liam. “She knows these fields and valleys like her own hands, and she’d never let herself be found out by some out of town dandy. No offense meant.” 

Liam certainly sounded like he had meant some offense.

“That may be true,” Aziraphale pressed, “but she’s got Mary with her too, and seems that girl’s less one for rough sleeping and wandering the glens.”

Liam’s granite eyes shot up to meet Aziraphale’s. “Mary’s with her?”

Aziraphale nodded.

“And they’re safe? Does Mister Conley know?”

“I haven’t the pleasure of meeting a Conley, but neither Mary’s father nor her husband know where she is, if that’s your meaning.”

Liam furrowed his brow. “Who are you?”

“A friend,” Aziraphale said. “With a message. Bethany wanted to come herself, but…”

“Mister Conley,” Liam said knowingly. Then, “What’s the message?”

Liam was packed and ready to go in less than five minutes, having few qualms about abandoning the farm to his father’s care. “I’ve got a sister, but she lives off with our aunt in Dublin,” he told Aziraphale. “I’ll write to her once I get to America. She’ll be alright.”

Aziraphale delivered Liam to the entrance of St. Dymphna’s, then slipped around the back to resume his life as Sister Zylphia. Liam later gave him a double-take, but his arrival had caused enough chaos that his suspicions barely registered.

Bethany had squealed and run immediately into Liam’s arms, where the two embraced like siblings. Aziraphale had always felt a fondness for human friendships that sprouted from childhood, and it broke his heart a bit to think of the two separated. But her future was in London, and his in New York, and there was nothing for it now.

That evening, Aziraphale sat at his small desk, penning a letter for Liam to carry with him to New York, granting him Mr. Ezra Faile’s blessing. He sealed it with a far more ethereal blessing, imagining the life Liam might lead in the American city where all things were possible. Outside, in the warm dusk, a frog’s hearty song rose from the garden. 


End file.
